Gymnast

GYMNAST, n. A man who puts his brains into his muscles. The word is from the Greek gumnos, naked, all the athletic exercises being performed in that shocking conditions; but the members of the Olympic Club make a compromise between the requirements of the climate and those of the ladies who attend their exhibitions. They wear their pyjamas.

2010 Update: An athlete gifted with all the talents of an assassin but burdened with none of the responsibilities.

Regarding the post time: It seemed awfully quiet.

Gordion Knot

GORDIAN KNOT, n. Gordon, the King of Khartoum, had as a fastening to his war-chariot a knot so intricate that neither end of the thong could be seen, and he used to brag about it a good deal. Instructed by an oracle, he declared that anybody attempting to undo it and failing should stand the beer, but anybody succeeding should receive the greatest honor that he had ever conferred-a favor which would turn the unsuccessful competitors pea-green with envy and break them all up: the King would shake him for the drinks. When this decree was promulgated all Gordon's subjects joined the Good Templars, but Alexander Badlam of Macedon hearing about it, started at once for the Soudanese capital. Ushered with great pomp into the harness-room, he took out his pocket-knife and calmly cut the knot, remarking with the ready wit which distinguished him from the humorist of the period: "Get onto that racket, my son." "Shake," replied the monarch with truly oriental exuberance of imagery. They shook, using four dice. The King threw four sixes. "Two small pairs," he explained, with royal unconcern. Alexander dumped the cubes back into the box, blew into it, muttered a few cabalistic words and threw. Five deuces! "In Macedon this is the national game, endeared to the popular heart by seventeen centuries of unbroken succcess, and I have been brought through it with a lantern," said he, laconically. Graciously pleased to mark his sense of the performance in words of memorable significance, the monarch exclaimed: "You take the cake," and led the way to the royal sideboard, when, later in the day, Alexander, over three fingers of same as before, explained with the richness of metaphor which characterizes the speech of men familiar with that barbaric splendor of Eastern courts: "It's a cold day when I get left."

2010 Update: In legend, a knot that so frustrated attempts to unwind it that Alexander the Great was inspired to cut it with a sword. The memory of the Gordion Knot is often used as a pedagogical device to describe a problem so complex that only common sense can solve it.

Genealogy

GENEALOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

2010 Update: An idle sifting through the past for the foundation of a dynamic future.

Great

GREAT, n.[SIC] Distinguished by superior excellence among one's fellows, as Hector Stuart among Bards of the South Sea, Dr. Bartlett among the Bulletin's agricultural homilists, Peter Robertson among the writers of "Undertones" in the Chronicle and Harrie McDowell among the fat boys of the Ingleside.

"I'm great," the lion said-"I reign
The monarch of the wood and plain!"

The elephant replied: "I'm great-
No quadruped can match my weight!"

"I'm great- no animal has half
So long a neck!" said the Giraffe.

"I'm great," the kangaroo said-"See

My caudal muscularity!"

"The Possum said: "I'm great-behold,

My tail is lithe and bald and cold!"

"An Oyster fried was understood

To say "I'm great because I'm good!"

Each reckons greatness to consist

In that in which he heads the list.

And Harris thinks he tops his class

Because he is the greatest Ass.

2010 Update: adj. Surmounting falling standards, as the man who, having walked down the beach at low tide and returned with dry feet is declared to walk on water.

Grip

GRIP, n. Ex-Speaker Park's manner of fondling the property of the commonwealth.

He has so hard-and-fast a grip

That nothing from his fist can slip.

Well-buttered eels you might find o'erwhelm

In tubs of liquid slippery elm

In vain-from his detaining cinch

They could not struggle half an inch.

'Tis lucky that he so is planned

His breath he draws not with his hand,

For, if he did, so great his greed

He'd draw his last with eager speed.

Nay, that were well, you say. Not so-

He'd draw but never let it go.

2010 Update: The wag of a woman.

Griffin

GRIFFIN, n. An animal having the body and legs of a beast and the head and wings of a bird. It is now thought to be extinct, though Arsene Marsil saw one as lately as 1783, in the Vosges. Its fossil remains in singular preservation are so frequently found in the ruins of ancient cities that many eminent scientists (including Drs. Harkness and Behr, of the California Academy of Sciences) suppose it to have been generally domesticated. Linnaeus, following Pliny, calls it the Quadrupavis amalgamata mirabilis, but the learned Professor of Natural History at the Berkeley University ingeniously points out that it belongs to the genus Aquileo. Like the mule (Asinequus ostinatus) the griffin owed nothing to the Creator: it was the result of an entangling alliance between the eagle and the lion.

2010 Update: An animal that looked like a lion in departure and a canary on approach. It is speculated to have been a forbear of the modern manager (Homo intoxicus.)

Update: An uninfernal birthday to Ambrose Bierce.

Gawk

GAWK, n. A person of imperfect grace, somewhat overgiven to the vice of falling over his own feet.

2010 Update: Beauty, in the eyes of the beheld. See also: LEER.

Gawby

GAWBY, n. A Hector A Stuart.

2010 Update: A babbling idiot as identified in an obsolete vocabulary.

Guinea

GUINEA, n. A coin of twenty-one shillings, formerly minted in Great Britain, and still used as the unit of computation in fees for professional service, bribes and other transactions between gentlemen.

The bank is but the guinea's camp. Burns

2010 Update: The vast forested portion of West Africa, named by other Africans for the blackness of the inhabitants, as England was once named Albion by other Europeans for whiteness. In the West, Guinea is generally known for shady conspiracies between governments and corporations, a malcontented populace and Tarzan.

Grapeshot

GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.

2010 Update: The pre-industrial medium of exchange for international commerce and since supplanted by suspicion.

Happy birthday to the Old Mule (now 35.)

Gravitation

GRAVITATION, n. The tendency of all bodies to approach one another with a strength proportion to the quantity of matter they contain — the quantity of matter they contain being ascertained by the strength of their tendency to approach one another. This is a lovely and edifying illustration of how science, having made A the proof of B, makes B the proof of A.

2010 Update: The force that divides horizontal from vertical and binds the spirit to the stomach.

Grave

GRAVE, n. A place in which the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.

Beside a lonely grave I stood —

With brambles 'twas encumbered;

The winds were moaning in the wood,

Unheard by him who slumbered,

A rustic standing near, I said:

"He cannot hear it blowing!"

"'Course not," said he: "the feller's dead —

He can't hear nowt that's going."

"Too true," I said; "alas, too true —

No sound his sense can quicken!"

"Well, mister, wot is that to you? —

The deadster ain't a-kickin'."

I knelt and prayed: "O Father, smile

On him, and mercy show him!"

That countryman looked on the while,

And said: "Ye didn't know him."

—Pobeter Dunko

2010 Update: The whole Earth and any portion thereof set aside for one individual's excess capacity. A typical grave has room enough for a human's heart, skin, brain, bones, muscles and sinews but not his ambition which must be interred separately in an earlier rite.

Gold-Bug

GOLD-BUG, n. In political matters, a miscreant who has the wickedness to know that legislation cannot maintain a permanent relation between the values of two metals, even by the luminous device pf binding them together in the same coins. A miller who grinds the faces of the poor and takes the whole grist for toll. A hideous monster that disturbs the Bulletin's repose by sitting astride Deacon Fitch's stomach, picking the bones of "the debtor class" and blaspheming the dollar of our fathers.

2009 Update: A politician whose crusade for purity leads him at last to the dollar, who reads Austrian treatises in the original Texan and who turns to smelted stone for wisdom and temperance.

Gastric Juice

GASTRIC JUICE, n. A liquid for dissolving oxen and making men of the pulp.

2009 Update: The humor that controls intelligence in a man, gravity in a woman and affection in a dog.

Gnu

GNU, n. An animal of South Africa, which in its domesticated state resembles a horse, a buffalo and a stag. In its wild condition it is something like a thunderbolt, an earthquake and a cyclone.

A hunter from Kew caught a distant view
Of a peacefully meditative gnu,
And he said: "I'll pursue, and my hands imbrue
In its blood at a closer interview."
But that beast did ensue and the hunter it threw
O'er the top of a palm that adjacent grew;
And he said as he flew: "It is well I withdrew
Ere, losing my temper, I wickedly slew
That really meritorious gnu."
—Jarn Leffer

2009 Update: A beast with a goat's beard, the hooves of a deer and the shoulders of a boar which is absent from mythology because it lacks the lust, cowardice and malice that make such animals exotic to fabulists.

Grape

GRAPE, n.

Hail noble fruit! — by Homer sung,
Anacreon and Khayyam;
Thy praise is ever on the tongue
Of better men than I am.

The lyre in my hand has never swept,
The song I cannot offer:
My humbler service pray accept —
I'll help to kill the scoffer.

The water-drinkers and the cranks
Who load their skins with liquor —
I'll gladly bear their belly-tanks
And tap them with my sticker.

Fill up, fill up, for wisdom cools
When e'er we let the wine rest.
Here's death to Prohibition's fools,
And every kind of vine-pest!

—Jamrach Holobom

2009 Update: The fruit of a tangled vine, by a tangled vine and for a tangled line.

Ode to my own sweet sister on her birthday

A sister is a creature composed

Of useful parts scented and twisted like rose-

Whenever her family's foolish or frivolous

Her voice like a wolf's whisper delivers us,

She carries us o'er muddy roads, who knows how

On shoulders like oxen's, pulling a plow,

She sees flowers bloom in the driest of gulches

Through eyes that are colored the average of mulches

No hill she can't climb, and often I wonder

Whether there's fences her legs can't carry her under.

With a mop on her head and two hammers for feet

Who can doubt it was she made the toolkit complete?

GORGONS, n. pl. Mythical sisters of ancient legend with serpentine hair and expressions that turned men to stone. That the gorgons are mythical can be proven in that they lack the additional venomous fangs, lion claws, and lethal shrieks of all attestable sisters.

Happy birthday, 'Na and you're welcome

Geneology

GENEOLOGY, n. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own.

2009 Update: Testimony for the complainant by those in the family unable to dissent or recuse themselves. A renegade's resumé.

Grime

GRIME, n. A peculiar substance widely distributed throughout nature, but found most abundantly on the hands of eminent American statesmen. It is insoluble in public money.

2009 Update: Precipitate of purpose.

Gender

GENDER, n. The sex of words.

A masculine wooed a feminine noun,

But his courting didn't suit her,

So he begged a verb his wishes to crown,

But the verb replied, with a rigid frown:

"What object have I? I'm neuter."

2009 Update: The first in a series of certainties that confuse us as we grow, or seem to.